Irish Biotech sector grows well

Ireland has a well-developed biotechnology sector, representing a blend of large foreign manufacturers and strong indigenous companies some with stock exchange listings abroad. There are also quite a number of promising small start-up companies, sometimes no more than one person with a good idea.

The term biotechnology is very wide and in its broadest sense includes any process that includes a biological element. Brewing, cheese making and advanced plant breeding can be included within biotechnology even though these processes do not require the engineering of an organism.

Many people equate biotechnology, however, with the more specific term, genetic engineering. This involves changing the genetic make-up of a bacteria, a plant or yeast and then using the new organism as part of a process. Existing product examples include the engineering of a plant that can produce Hepatitis B vaccine for human use; modification of yeast strains that can then produce penicillin; and genetic changes to a variety of tomato plant which retards spoiling and improves shelf-life.

Biotechnology in Ireland is overseen and promoted by BioResearch Ireland (BRI) which was established in 1987 under the then government's National Biotechnology Programme. Its primary role is to commercialise biotech innovations flowing from the university sector, and provide a contracted research service for companies which want to exploit biotechnology.

BRI was established when the information technology and biotechnology sectors internationally were attracting the smart money given their huge potential for growth, explained its director, Dr Jim Ryan.

He says Ireland has 170 biotech companies employing 45,000, which includes 55 Irish firms staffing 4,800 people. The overseas companies are mainly in the pharmaceutical and healthcare areas while older indigenous companies are predominantly in brewing, distilling, dairy and other agribusiness sectors.

However, the fourth annual Ernst & Young report on the European biotechnology industry, published last April, suggests that Ireland only has about 30 true biotech companies.

It uses a much stricter definition, but this total includes multinationals such as Schering Plough, which produces human interferon in its Irish plant worth over $500 million a year; and strong indigenous companies such as Elan and Trinity Biotech, both NASDAQ listed; and Biotrin Ltd, which has successfully attracted two rounds of international investment.

Ernst & Young indicates that 1996 revenues for European companies were up 17 per cent and the number of new companies was 23 per cent more than in 1995. Dr Ryan suggested that biotech had not grown as dramatically here, but growth was significant nonetheless. Employee numbers here grow by about 1 per cent a year.

The increases here come in the main from start-ups and also from "conversion" projects, the replacement of older processes to biotech-based processes. "Seventy per cent of drugs under development now are biotechnologybased," he indicated.

BRI aims to help commercialise Irish research, Dr Ryan said. It operates five centres in conjunction with the universities and attempts to bring new products and processes to the market. It either assists the creation of standalone companies or enters partnership with existing ones.

BRI last year listed almost 180 client companies. This included 128 Irish firms, 30 Irish-based multinationals and 21 companies overseas.

UCG handles work related to medical diagnostics; UCC handles food-related biotech; DCU is responsible for work relating to cell and tissue cultures; UCD handles agricultural or veterinary biotech; and Trinity works in the pharmaceutical biotechnology sector.